The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has selected a Texas Tech University center to monitor retail meat.
The Lubbock school's International Center for Food Industry Excellence is getting $700,000 to be a surveillance lab for the federal agency's National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System.
The federal money will be used to monitor beef, pork and poultry products for pathogens and antibiotic resistance as part of the FDA's retail meat surveillance program.
The center's director, Mindy Brashears, says the center's experience in food safety and antibiotic resistance monitoring in the meat industry helped to attract the federal grant, which she says will have a long term impact on public health.
The monitoring system works with state and local public health departments and federal agencies.
